Secular Knowledge Versus Islamic Knowledge and Uncritical Intellectuality

This article examines the politics of Islamic postcolonial Occidentalism as a response to the secularizing influence of western modernity. By taking the work of Ziauddin Sardar, a Pakistani-British intellectual, as an example of Occidentalist Islamic thought, I have attempted to problematize the binaristic division of the world into two neat categories: the secular West and Islamized Islam. Sardar's reactionary ideas have been contrasted with the work of secular Muslim scholars such as Pervez Hoodbhoy, Fatima Mernissi and Eqbal Ahmad. The article seeks to foreground the secular and critical traditions within Islamic societies, which are often repressed by obscurantist and reactionary intellectuals. The main argument of the article is that a valid critique of Islam is not always Eurocentric in its origin.